Review: Swobo Crosby Bicycle

It’s not a hybrid and it’s not a cyclocross either. But Swobo’s Crosby is an undeniably awesome bike. Recently Wired.com senior editor and human powered transportation proponent Dylan Tweney took the two wheeler for a series of spins. His take? The beef-cake of a bike is equally at home on unpaved dirt paths or freshly laden asphalt roads. Additionally awesome is a wheel hub that lets you switch from single speed to fixie mode. From Dylan’s review:

As it comes from Swobo, the Crosby is set up with a Sram Torpedo hub, which can switch between freewheelin’ single-speed mode and hipster fixed-gear goodness with a few turns of a screw. Instead of pulling the whole wheel off and turning it around, as you do with flip-flop hubs, you just poke a narrow screwdriver in a hole at the axis of the hub, turn about seven times, and the hub assumes its new identity. Pretty cool! On the downside, there’s a bit more backlash in the fixed-gear mode than we’d like: The pedals have a few degrees of play before they engage the wheels. For that reason, and because we’re not pegged jeans-wearing hipsters, we rode the Crosby primarily in freewheel mode.